Cellular-related quality of service (“QoS”) issues are a significant source of frustration for service providers as well as their customers and users of the customers' accounts. Common QoS issues include bandwidth limitations, jitter, delay and latency, packet loss, and interference. QoS issues may result in a number of problems for customers/users, potentially causing customers to change service providers. In one example, a customer may experience a “dropped call,” in which a phone call unexpectedly ends. In another example, a customer may experience a slow data transfer rate that is not suitable for transferring high-bandwidth content, such as video and music. QoS problems may result in unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger.
As cellular devices become more pervasive, the number of simultaneous users is bound to increase, especially in urban and metropolitan areas. One problem that arises when relatively close users simultaneously transmit data to and/or receive data from a cellular tower is co-interference. Co-interference generally occurs when radio frequency (“RF”) signals between a first cellular device and a cellular tower interfere with RF signals between a second cellular device and the cellular tower.
The level of co-interference may be affected by the amount of transmission power utilized by transmitting cellular devices to a cellular tower. The amount of transmission power may be affected by a variety of factors. For example, to transmit more content or to transmit the content at a higher QoS, the transmission power is generally increased. Other factors, such as the presence of obstructions and increasing distance between the cellular device and tower, may also cause the transmission power to be increased, often in attempting to maintain satisfactory received signal levels as the path loss increased due to increased distance. As the level of co-interference increases, the QoS for the affected cellular devices may be reduced. Such a reduction in QoS may be unacceptable for certain users, such as business users, who pay a premium for and demand high QoS.